


Melancholic

by akouos



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Cute Dogmeat, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11898348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akouos/pseuds/akouos
Summary: It's the best way she can say thank you.





	Melancholic

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted for a prompt on Tumblr, cross-posted [here](http://denerims.tumblr.com/post/164572139389/melancholic-for-butch-and-your-lw). Enjoy!

She slept a lot.

It seemed to be the only thing to fill her boring days of inaction. It was hard to believe that she missed searching the wastes, trekking out to find her father or some sort of purpose for her life. The water purifier had been taken over by the Brotherhood, the Enclave wiped out and all she was left with was her loneliness and indirection. 

The only thing that seemed to fill the ache and soothe the grief was sleeping or drinking – and Butch. 

He was a constant she hadn’t gotten tired of yet, surprisingly. 

So on days like this, when the summer sun was too hot to even be outside and it’s swollen glow hung high in the sky, they sat on the couch downstairs in her Megaton shack and drank. 

The purr of the fans had lulled her to sleep as she lazed on her couch, one arm hanging off the side to tangle in Dogmeat’s fur. She didn’t look up when the door opened, only stirred from her tired haze a little. She felt the dog’s head shoot up and then slump back down with a little huff, as if irritated with Butch’s entrance.

“Move, nosebleed,” he grunted, picking her legs up and slumping down onto the couch. She felt her legs flop back down and into his lap. Catherine put up no resistance when Butch pried the warm beer bottle from her fingers to take a sip himself.

“Caravan came today.”

She felt something plop onto her stomach. Some kind of paper. Her fingers ran over it. 

“Who the hell would write me?” she asked, her eyes finally opening to peer at him and then the envelope. Scrawled simply in pencil was ‘ _Catherine_ ’. Butch shrugged and finished her beer for her. 

In all her wanderlusting, she had forgotten how good it felt to have someone who knew her. All the others she had kept in her company were decent people but she had grown tired of rehashing her past, explaining where she was going or where she came from. For her and Butch they simply…fell back into old patterns. 

“Maybe it’s one of your fans. You’re pretty popular out there in the Wasteland, oh high savior who hark gifted us with the waters of- _oof_ ,” he grunted as Catherine’s foot jabbed into his stomach.  
  
“It’s hath, moron.”

“What?”

His brow furrowed in confusion and his hand rested on her ankle. 

She rolled her eyes, hyper aware of touch on her bare skin, “Nevermind.”

Her fingers tore open the letter. Not recognizing the quick but elegant scrawl, it took her reading the first few lines to realize who it was from and promptly toss it into the wastebin. The fan above them shook lazily, stuttering on its axle. She really needed to look at that generator. Butch didn’t say anything, just cooed softly to Dogmeat when he rested his head in his lap at the sound of a sugarbomb box being opened.

There was an empty, tight feeling in her stomach and her eyes drooped. Catherine managed to get her uncooperative, loose muscles moving and pulled her legs out of Butch’s lap. 

“Gunna go upstairs,” she muttered, stretching her hands up towards the ceiling. 

Butch didn’t say anything but Catherine felt his eyes on her.

~

She startled awake, like she always did. The late afternoon heat stuck to her. The small shafts of sunlight pouring in through the tiny rusted holes of the tin-can walls. Cathy sighed, watching a bug bounce off the light above her head she had left on. It took a few moments before she pulled herself out of bed, rubbing at an ache in her neck. 

Butch was still downstairs, though he had migrated from the couch to the floor in front of the couch and had a cigarette hanging from his mouth, a couple of her magazines spread out in various disarray in front of him. _Guns and Bullets_ was half open in his lap.

Catherine shuffled into and out of the kitchen with a spoon and a cracked open can of beans before either of them said anything. 

“Why did you throw away that letter?”

“And you always said I was nosey.”

“You _are_ nosey.”

There was a beat of silence.

Catherine sighed, slumped down next to him, leaning against the couch. There was sweat on the back of her neck and she set her food down to pull her springy blonde hair up into a messy bun. Shooing Dogmeat away from her food, she sighed.

“It was from Dr. Li. She wants me to come get some of my father’s things.”

That made Butch raise his head to look at her but she was staring at the shelves by the staircase; crammed with all sorts of knick-knacks, books and a framed photo of aforementioned father with a gap-toothed little Catherine.

“Do you want to go get them?” Butch asked after another beat, stubbing out his cigarette into a chipped porcelain bowl.

“No,” Cathy answered but she wasn’t sure yet if it was true. At the moment, she didn’t have much energy to do more than sit here with him. 

She almost jumped at the contact of a hand on the back of hers.

Butch’s fingers slid into hers and he stared at her.

It felt so good just to be touched.

“You got soft on me,” Catherine murmured. She felt like she was drowning, the tightness in her chest unbearable. She made a pact with herself when she was six that she would never cry in front of Butch DeLoria again. 

“I know,” he nodded and saved her with silence. 

Two days later, Butch set off for Rivet City with a caravan and came back a week later with a box of things. 

She wanted to yell at him, tell him he had overstepped his bounds. Instead, she silently shoved it onto one of the metal shelves upstairs before spending the rest of the night in her room. 

It’s the best way she can say thank you.


End file.
